Introduction to Human Behavior

Academic and commercial researchers alike are aiming towards a deeper understanding of how humans act, make decisions, plan, and memorize. Advances in wearable sensor technology along with procedures for multi-modal data acquisition and analysis have lately been enabling researchers all across the globe to tap into previously unknown secrets of the human brain and mind.

Still, as emphasized by Makeig and colleagues (2009), the most pivotal challenge lies in the systematic observation and interpretation of how distributed brain processes support our natural, active, and flexibly changing behavior and cognition.

We all are active agents, continuously engaged in attempting to fulfill bodily needs and mental desires within complex and ever-changing surroundings, while interacting with our environment. Brain structures have evolved that support cognitive processes targeted towards the optimization of outcomes for any of our body-based behaviors.

N.B. this post is an excerpt from our Human BehaviorGuide. You can download your free copy below and get even more insights into human behavior.

In scientific research, human behavior is a complex interplay of three components: actions, cognition, and emotions.

Sounds complicated? Lets address them one by one.

An action denotes everything that can be observed, either with bare eyes or measured by physiological sensors. Think of an action as an initiation or transition from one state to another at a movie set, the director shouts action for the next scene to be filmed.

Behavioral actions can take place on various time scales, ranging from muscular activation to sweat gland activity, food consumption, or sleep.

Cognitions describe thoughts and mental images you carry with you, and they can be both verbal and nonverbal. I have to remember to buy groceries, or Id be curious to know what she thinks of me, can be considered verbal cognitions. In contrast, imagining how your house will look like after remodeling could be considered a nonverbal cognition.

Cognitions comprise skills and knowledge knowing how to use tools in a meaningful manner (without hurting yourself), sing karaoke songs or being able to memorize the color of Marty McFlys jacket in Back to the Future (its red).

Commonly, an emotion is any relatively brief conscious experience characterized by intense mental activity, and a feeling that is not characterized as resulting from either reasoning or knowledge. This usually exists on a scale, from positive (pleasurable) to negative (unpleasant).

Other aspects of physiology that are indicative of emotional processing such as increased heart rate or respiration rate caused by increased arousal are usually hidden to the eye. Similar to cognitions, emotions cannot be observed directly. They can only be inferred indirectly by tracking facial electromyographic activity (fEMG),analyzing facial expressions, monitoring arousal using ECG, galvanic skin response (GSR), respiration sensors, or self-reported measures, for example.

Actions, cognitions and emotions do not run independently of each other their proper interaction enables you to perceive the world around you, listen to your inner wishes and respond appropriately to people in your surroundings. However, it is hard to tell what exactly is cause and effect turning your head (action) and seeing a familiar face might cause a sudden burst of joy (emotion) accompanied by an internal realization (cognition):

action = emotion (joy) + cognition (hey, theres Peter!)

In other cases, the sequence of cause and effect might be reversed: Because youre sad (emotion) and ruminating on relationship issues (cognition), you decide to go for a walk to clear your head (action).

emotion (sadness) + cognition (I should go for a walk) = action

Humans are active consumers of sensory impressionsYou actively move your body to achieve cognitive goals and desires, or to get into positive (or out of negative) emotional states. In other words: While cognition and emotion cannot be observed directly, they certainly drive the execution of observable action. For example, through moving your body to achieve cognitive goals and desires, or to get into positive (or out of negative) emotional states.

Cognitions are specific to time and situationsNew information that you experience is adapted, merged and integrated into your existing cognitive mindset. This allows you to flexibly adapt to and predict how events in the current environment may be influenced by your actions. Whenever you decide to carry out an action, you accomplish the decision in a timely, environment- and situation-appropriate manner. Put differently: Your cognitive system has to manage the dynamic interplay of flexibility and stability.

The former is important as you have to couple responses dynamically to stimuli, dependent on intentions and instructions. This allows you to respond to one and the same stimulus in near-unlimited ways. Stability, by contrast, is crucial for maintaining lasting stimulus-response relationships, allowing you to respond consistently to similar stimuli.

Imagination and abstract cognition are body-basedEven abstract cognitions (devoid of direct physical interaction with the environment) are body-based. Imagining limb movements triggers the same brain areas involved when actually executing the movements. When you rehearse material in working memory, the same brain structures used for speech perception and production are activated (Wilson, 2001).

When we talk about behavior, we need to consider how it is acquired. Learning denotes any acquisition process of new skills and knowledge, preferences, attitudes and evaluations, social rules and normative considerations.

You surely have heard of the nature nurture debate in the past, there has been quite some fighting about whether behavior was solely driven by genetic predispositions (nature) or environmental factors (nurture).

Today, its no longer a question of either/or. There simply is too much evidence for the impact of nature and nurture alike behavior is considered to be established by the interplay of both factors.

Current theoretical frameworks also emphasize the active role of of the agent in acquiring new skills and knowledge. You are able to develop and change yourself through ongoing skill acquisition throughout life, which can have an impact on a neurological level. Think of it as assigning neuroscientific processes to the phrase practice makes perfect.

Classical conditioning refers to a learning procedure in which stimulus-response pairings are learned seeing tasty food typically triggers salivation (yummy!), for example. While food serves as unconditioned stimulus, salivation is the unconditioned response.

Unconditioned stimulus -> unconditioned response

Seeing food -> salivation

If encountering food is consistently accompanied by a (previously) neutral stimulus such as ringing a bell, a new stimulus-response pairing is learned.

unconditioned stimulus + conditioned stimulus -> unconditioned response

seeing food + hearing bell -> salivation

The bell becomes a conditioned stimulus and is potent enough to trigger salivation even in absence of the actual food.

conditioned stimulus > response

hearing bell -> salivation

Described as generalization, this learning process was first studied by Ivan Pavlov and team (1927) through experiments with dogs, which is why classical conditioning is also referred to as Pavlovian conditioning.

Today, classical conditioning is one of the most widely understood basic learning processes.

Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, denotes a type of learning in which the strength of a behavior is modified by the consequences (reward or punishment), signaled via the preceding stimuli.

In both operant and classical conditioning behavior is controlled by environmental stimuli however, they differ in nature. In operant conditioning, behavior is controlled by stimuli which are present when a behavior is rewarded or punished.

Operant conditioning was coined by B.F. Skinner. As a behaviorist, Skinner believed that it was not really necessary to look at internal thoughts and motivations in order to explain behavior. Instead, he suggested to only take external, observable causes of human behavior into consideration.

According to Skinner, actions that are followed by desirable outcomes are more likely to be repeated while those followed by undesirable outcomes are less likely to be repeated. In this regard, operant conditioning relies on a fairly simple premise: Behavior that is followed by reinforcement will be strengthened and is more likely to occur again in the future.

The key concepts of operant conditioning are:

These learning theories give guidance for knowing how we gather information about the world. The way in which we learn is both emotionally and physiologically appraised. This will have consequences for how we act, and carry out behaviors in the future what we attend to, and how it makes us feel.

While behavior is acquired through learning, whether the acting individual decides to execute an action or withhold a certain behavior is dependent on the associated incentives, benefits and risks (if Peter was penalized for doing this, I certainly wont do it!).

But which are the factors driving our decisions? Theories such as social learning theory provide a base set of features, but one of the most influential psychological theoriesaboutdecision-makingactually has its origins in an economics journal.

In 1979, Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky published a paper proposing a theoretical framework called the Prospect Theory. This laid the foundations for Kahnemans later thoughts and studies on human behavior, that was summarized in his bestselling bookThinking, Fast and Slow.

Kahnemans theories were also concerned with how people process information. He proposed that there are two systems which determine how we make decisions: System 1 which is fast but relatively inaccurate, and system 2 which is slow but more accurate.

The theory suggests that our everyday decisions are carried out in one of these two ways, from buying our morning coffee, to making career choices. We will use different approaches depending on the circumstances.

Human behavior and decision-making are heavily affected by emotions even in subtle ways that we may not always recognize. After making an emotionally-fueled decision, we tend to continue to use the imperfect reasoning behind it, and a mild incidental emotion in decision-making can live longer than the emotional experience itself as pointed out by Andrade & Ariely (2009).

An example of mood manipulation affecting decision making was completed by researchers who wanted to know how a willingness to help could be affected by positive feelings.

To study their question, they placed a Quarter (25ct) clearly visible in a phone booth (yes, these things actually existed!) and waited for passers-by to find the coin. An actor working on behalf of the psychologist stepped in, asking to take an urgent phone call. Study participants who actually found the coin were significantly happier, allowing the confederate to take the call, while those who didnt find the coin were unaffected, and more likely to say no (Isen & Levin, 1972).

Research on human behavior addresses how and why people behave the way they do. However, as you have seen in the previous sections, human behavior is quite complex as it is influenced, modulated and shaped by multiple factors which are often unrecognized by the individual: Overt or covert, logical or illogical, voluntary or involuntary.

Conscious vs. unconscious behaviorConsciousness is a state of awareness for internal thoughts and feelings as well for proper perception for and uptake of information from your surroundings.

A huge amount of our behaviors are guided by unconscious processes. Just like an iceberg, there is a great amount of hidden information, and only some of it is visible with the naked eye.

Overt vs. covert behaviorOvert behavior describes any aspects of behavior that can be observed, for example body movements or (inter-)actions. Also, physiological processes such as blushing, facial expressions or pupil dilation might be subtle, but can still be obeserved. Covert processes are thoughts (cognition), feelings (emotion) or responses which are not easily seen. Subtle changes in bodily processes, for instance, are hidden to the observers eye.

In this case, bio- or physiological sensors are used to aid the observation with quantitative measures as they uncover processes that are covert in the first place. Along this definition, EEG, MEG, fMRI and fNIRS all monitor physiological processes reflecting covert behavior.

Rational vs. irrational behaviorRational behavior might be considered any action, emotion or cognition which is pertaining to, influenced or guided by reason. In contrast, irrational behavior describes actions that are not objectively logical.

Patients suffering from phobias often report an awareness for their thoughts and fears being irrational (I know that the spider cant harm me) albeit they still cannot resist the urge to behave in a certain way.

Voluntary vs. involuntary behaviorVoluntary actions are self-determined and driven by your desires and decisions. By contrast, involuntary actions describe any action made without intent or carried out despite an attempt to prevent it.In cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, for example, patients are exposed to problematic scenarios, also referred to as flooding, such as spiders, social exhibition or a transatlantic plane ride.

Many of our behaviors appear to be voluntary, rational, overt, and conscious yet they only represent the tip of the iceberg for normal human behavior. The majority of our actions are involuntary, potentially irrational, and are guided by our subconscious. The way to access this other side of behavior is to examine the covert behaviors that occur as a result.

In order to describe and interpret human behavior, academic and commercial researchers have developed intricate techniques allowing for the collection of data indicative of personality traits, cognitive-affective states and problem solving strategies.

In experimental setups, specific hypotheses about stimulus-response relationships can be clarified. Generally, research techniques employed by scientists can be classified into qualitative and quantitative procedures.

Qualitative studiesgather non-numerical insights, for example by analyzing diary entries, using open questionnaires, unstructured interviews or observations. Qualitative field / usability studies, for example, aim towards understanding how respondents see the world and why they react in a specific way rather than counting responses and analyzing the data statistically.

Quantitative studies characterize statistical, mathematical or computational techniques using numbers to describe and classify human behavior. Examples for quantitative techniques include structured surveys, tests as well as observations with dedicated coding schemes. Also, physiological measurements from EEG, EMG, ECG, GSR and other sensors produce quantitative output, allowing researchers to translate behavioral observations into discrete numbers and statistical outputs.

Behavioral observation is one of the oldest tools for psychological research on human behavior. Researchers either visit people in their natural surroundings (field study) or invite individuals or groups to the laboratory.

Observations in the field have several benefits. Participants are typically more relaxed and less self-conscious when observed at home, at school or at the workplace. Everything is familiar to them, permitting relatively unfiltered observation of behavior which is embedded into the natural surroundings of the individual or group of interest.

However, theres always the risk of distraction shouting neighbors or phones ringing. Field observations are an ideal starting point of any behavioral research study. Just sitting and watching people offers tremendous amounts of insights if youre able to focus on a specific question or aspect of behavior.

Observation in the laboratory, by contrast, allows much more experimental control. You can exclude any unwanted aspects and completely ban smart phones, control the room layout and make sure to have everything prepared for optimal recording conditions (correct lighting conditions, ensuring a quiet environment, and so on).

You can create near-realistic laboratory environments building a typical family living room, office space or creative zone, for example, to make respondents feel at ease and facilitating more natural behavior.

Surveys and questionnaires are an excellent tool to capture self-reported behaviors and skills, mental or emotional states or personality profiles of your respondents. However, questionnaires are always just momentary snapshots and capture only certain aspects of a persons behavior, thoughts and emotions.

Surveys and questionnaires typically measure what Kahneman would describe as system 2 processes thoughts that are carried out slowly and deliberately. System 1 processes thoughts that are fast and automatic can be measured by other methods that detect quick physiological changes.

In market research, focus groups typically consist of a small number of respondents (about 415) brought together with a moderator to focus on beliefs and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea or packaging. Focus groups are qualitative tools as their goal is to discuss in the group instead of coming to individual conclusions.

What are the benefits of a product, what are the drawbacks, where could it be optimized, who are ideal target populations? All of these questions can be addressed in a focus group.

While surveys and focus groups can be instrumental in understanding our conscious thoughts and emotions, there is more to human behavior than meets the eye. The subconscious mind determines how our behavior is ultimately carried out, and only a small fraction of that is accessible from traditional methodologies using surveys and focus groups.

As some researchers have claimed, up to 90% of our actions are guided by the subconscious. While the other 10% is important, it is clear that there is much to gain by probing further than what is tested by traditional methods.

Modern approaches aim to explore the hidden and uncharted territory of the subconscious, by measuring reliable outputs that provide deeper information about what someone is really thinking.

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Human Behavior: The Complete Pocket Guide - iMotions